Auge

Definition

Auge is the traditional name for a planet's apogee — the point on its orbit-circle (the deferent) that lies farthest from the Earth in the older Earth-centered model of the sky. A planet "ascending to its auge," moving toward its greatest distance, was thought slightly advantaged; one "descending from its auge," moving toward perigee, its closest point, was thought slightly disadvantaged. The English word reshapes Latin aux, which itself comes from the Arabic awj ("highest point"). It matches what astronomers call aphelion for the planets and apogee for the Moon.

In Tradition

Accidental dignity is the strength a planet picks up from its situation rather than its sign, and the auge counts as a small strengthening factor: a planet rising toward its apogee gets a slight positive weight, one falling toward perigee a slight negative one. It sits among the distance-and-speed factors layered over essential dignity and sect. Avelar and Ribeiro, reconstructing the doctrine, score the auge at plus or minus two points and note its interpretive importance is small.

In Practice

When you tally up a planet's accidental dignities and weaknesses, the auge gives you one small line of the reckoning. You work out whether the planet is moving toward its apogee — its farthest point from the Earth, where it looks smallest, faintest, and slowest — or away from it toward perigee. Rising to the auge is read as a slight benefit, falling away from it as a slight drawback; in the point-scoring of the modern traditional revival the two states get a small positive and a small negative value. For the outer planets the auge is reached near conjunction with the Sun; for Mercury and Venus it falls at superior conjunction; for the Moon the matching condition is its slower speed at apogee. Because the Earth-centered orbit-circle machinery the auge depends on is no longer taken as literal astronomy, and because its weight is minor even within the traditional system, astrologers treat it as an optional refinement you can leave out of a general chart assessment.

Historical Origin

Auge belongs to the traditional cosmology carried through the Arabic Almagest reception into the medieval Latin West, where Latin aux carries the Arabic awj. Guido Bonatti's Liber Astronomiae (13th century) treats the auge as the point on the deferent farthest from the Earth and distinguishes it from the epicycle. Modern traditional reconstructions by Helena Avelar and Luis Ribeiro keep it as a minor accidental-dignity factor.

Etymology

Origin: Latin. Meaning: Highest point, apogee.

Further Reading

• Helena Avelar and Luis Ribeiro, On the Heavenly Spheres
• Guido Bonatti, Liber Astronomiae
• Charles Obert, The Classical Seven Planets